At first they came for the smokers but I did not speak out as I did not smoke. Then they came for the binge drinkers but I said nothing as I did not binge. Now they have an obesity strategy.

Monday, July 13, 2009

What a mess

Even set against the low benchmark of Guardian commentary, this piece of hand-wringing by Peter Preston on Afghanistan is breath-taking. The argument goes like this:

There is no reason for being in Afghanistan.Winning the war will not affect Al-Qaida.Afghanistan is full of difficult foreigners "who haven't made it past 1400" (years that is, not two o'clock in the afternoon).The Taliban cannot be defeated by military means.Pakistan will defeat the Taliban by military means (mind you they invented them in the first place to get at India).The solution is containment.

Yep, containment. Let the Taliban take over and then ...

They can rule, to be sure: but only until the foe that has destroyed countless regimes before them – Afghanistan itself, intractable, restless, chaotic, ungovernable – destroys them, too. If Taliban land is cordoned off, isolated, consigned to its own devices, then it won't survive for long.

Presumably it will take until around 1450 - or ten to three - whatever.

And what about the people? The Afghan people who appear nowhere in the list? These "chaotic", "ungovernable" people with their universities, schools and gleaming new adult education projects? They won't survive long either. As I understand it, the general idea is to throw them to a bunch of ultra-violent, tyrannical theocrats and sit back and wait for everything to turn out nice in a fifteenth century sort of way. Is this really the face of modern liberal opinion?

6 comments:

I had this memory of a good version of The Guardian under Preston's reign, one that worked hard to keep the wars in the former Yugoslavia on the front page, one that worked hard to argue that Western leaders, including British politicians, had a responsibility for events there. The counter-argument from the right at the time was near identical to the crap from Preston this morning:

In fact, in so many ways, Afghanistan isn't a country at all: think five major ethnic groups, six major languages, and dozens of local district tongues (...etc.)

(...) what is there left for the Taliban inside Afghanistan, a puppet state without its old puppet masters?

They can rule, to be sure: but only until the foe that has destroyed countless regimes before them – Afghanistan itself, intractable, restless, chaotic, ungovernable – destroys them, too. If Taliban land is cordoned off, isolated, consigned to its own devices, then it won't survive for long.

sorry to be unusually thick here, but am clueless as to what your stance is here; that we should intervene more? or less? That we should regard sub-standard Adult Education courses as a justification for military intervention and regime change?

a) steaming piles of contradictory shit like this shouldn't be published.

b) in general, of all the policies adopted in foreign affairs, containment is the least lovely, meaning that the people are lumbered with a brutal regime so long as it doesn't try to move outside its borders. This doesn't mean that it isn't necessary at times, but please don't describe the result as peace - it is anything but peaceful for the people that live under it.

c) in this case, having removed the hated Taliban, then saying sorry you can have them back after all until you can get rid of them yourselves, whilst in the meantime we will totally isolate you, cut off all aid and trade, let you be starved and murdered, is hardly the most moral of foreign policies, and one least likely to produce a benign outcome.

3. a little knowledge of the country, other than the 1400 stereotype and constantly repeated inappropriate historical analogies, wouldn't go amiss if you want to pontificate in the press.

And the destruction of adult education is a most suitable case for regime change - or at least revenge; four men with baseball bats lurking outside a government building somewhere, "oi, is your name Denham?" ...

A great response to "Dorsetdipper," Peter. We should indeed regard "sub-standard Adult Education courses" as a justification for military intervention and regime change. Educating a single classroom, teaching one small group of girls how to write their own names, is justification for any and all effort, up to and including "regime change."

What is so wrong about regime change, anyway? What is so wrong with military intervention? If that's all that's available to the cause of changing a brutal and tyrannical regime, why not?

3. We have no right to press what this paper prefers to quotation mark as 'democracy' on anyone else in case it interferes with their right to imprison, torture or torch people, that right proceeding from the practitioners of such imprisonment, torture and torching being part of another and no less valuable cultural practice.

4. Such rights are inalienable to anyone who isn't 'us' or with 'us'

Note: for the purposes of this definition we and us read them throughout.

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About Me

This is the work avoidance strategy and ego trip of Peter Ryley, who has just retired, despite being far too young, from working in lifelong learning, latterly at the University of Hull, and from teaching part-time at Manchester Metropolitan University. I live partly in Manchester and the rest of the time in Pelion, Greece. I continue to research and write on the history of Anarchism, and have frequent rants about the importance and current parlous state of adult education.